I am trying to get this famous Musashi quote in Japanese and the internet has been a futile search. The grammar is way above my understanding of Japanese but I am going to throw my educated guess out there.

The Way is in training. -- Houhou no naka ni kunren suru. -- 方法の中に訓練する。

Is this right? And I need to write this in a small space, could I remove the particles and shorten it to this?

This is hard to pin down, especially as I don't speak Japanese, much less Classical Japanese.

The most definitive quote I could find -- i.e., from an actual online copy of the Book of Five Rings -- is 道を鍛錬する処, which I found here. However, few sources on google have this phrase.

When I googled it online I also found it written 道の鍛錬する所 in a few places, but this too doesn't exactly get a ton of hits. 所 and 処 are both kanji for ところ, and I'm not sure why を was changed to の. In fact I'm not clear on the role of the particle in either case...

I'm not sure what is the original quote though, as far as I know,
「千日の稽古を鍛とし、万日の稽古を錬とす」
seems to have a similar meaning to me. This is one of his famous words, at least.
The meaning of this?
Please! Someone! Thank you!

EDIT:
If you like this quote, the following would be a nice "short interpretation" in four kanjis.http://homepage2.nifty.com/tagi/galle016.htm
Or you could just write it like 「千鍛万錬」. But well...actually they are very difficult to read and get the meaning even for native speakers, for your information.

Jetsi wrote:I am trying to get this famous Musashi quote in Japanese and the internet has been a futile search. The grammar is way above my understanding of Japanese but I am going to throw my educated guess out there.

"For years it has to be said that if one wants to understand Gorin no Sho, one must also understand the Buddhist Sutras.Without this, it is impossible to understand the real meaning of Gorin no Sho and the mind of Musashi."
-The Hyoho Niten Ichiryu, by Colin Hyakutake-Watkin, Menkyo

Hi,
it's very difficult to explain even in Japanese. Because the original sentence is an old
Japanese and it's a way of 武士道 ぶしどう.
In Japanese, especially the 道 みち about 武術 ぶじゅつ(example Karate, Kendo, Judo),
means not only the way, but also the place to reach finally.
In this case, "the way is in training" means you can find the place after doing something harder and harder. Yes, I mean you should do training again and again to get the place.
There is the way, if you do training again and again. When you do it for a thousand days,
it could be 鍛 たん(harden, build up), do it for ten thousand days, it could be 錬 れん
(knead) for itself, naturally.
鍛錬 たんれん is like that type of matters.

I'm not sure I've explained well or not. But still, I hope it helps you.
by Setaceau

You mean どう, not ど. Yeah, that was my first thought, too. In fact, part of finding the Japanese quote was me googling for 道 (on the hunch that it was the probable word for "way") along with the English version of the quote, and I had どう in mind.

However, I found it read with みち in similar contexts (I think one text had section headings with kana or romaji to go with the kana, and it read it as みち）, and Setaceau also says it's みち, so I'd say it's probably みち. Don't try to make it more Japanese-y than the actual Japanese.

Jetsi wrote:A question on 道. When I think of みち I think of a road. In keeping with martial arts traditions wouldn't it be more appropriate to pronounce 道 as どう?

Whether to read it as みち or どう is mostly a matter of use rather than meaning. Alone 道 is pronounced みち and in most compounds it is pronounced どう regardless of whether it is describing a physical object (道、道路) or an intellectual or spiritual path (道が永い、武道).

As names of martial and other arts are usually compounds, they usually use どう. 武道、合気道、柔道、剣道、居合道、弓道、銃剣道、茶道、花道, etc.

For martial traditions you also have the suffixes 術 and 法. The former can be swapped out with 道 in many of the above examples, the latter is used in words like 兵法（へいほう、ひょうほう）、拳法、剣法.